Soren Bryce

VIDEO

Soren Bryce

biography

On her full-length debut Discussions With Myself, Soren Bryce builds a world all her own—a sprawling dreamscape set to lushly detailed alt-pop, constructed with a newfound sense of self-possession. With her ethereal yet commanding vocals, the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist sings of paper dolls and plane crashes with equal intensity, infusing the album with moments of bruising honesty and fragile wisdom.

Working with producer Justyn Pilbrow (Halsey, The Knocks, The Neighbourhood), Bryce sculpted a sonic universe that’s moody yet luminous, delicate yet volatile. While she notes that Pilbrow took on a mentor-like role in honing her production skills, the 20-year-old artist mostly handled the album’s pre-production on her own.“

Throughout Discussions With Myself, Bryce shows a nuanced lyricism that reveals the literary origins of her songwriting. “When I was kid I was always into short stories and narratives, and one day someone told me I should try writing a song,” she recalls. “And then once I started writing, I never really stopped.” She soon began writing a song almost every day, tapping into the musical knowledge she’d gained from taking up violin at the age of 10. Later adding guitar and keyboards to her repertoire, she relocated to Los Angeles in her early teens, teamed up with David Kahne (an esteemed producer known for his work with artists like Paul McCartney and Stevie Nicks), and put out the Soren Bryce EP in August 2015.

Though her artistry has sharply evolved over the years, a certain guiding philosophy has sustained in Bryce’s songwriting. “One thing that’s never changed for me is using music as an outlet to reflect back on what I’m going through—almost as if the songs are a way to document my life,” she says. Still, one of the greatest triumphs in creating Discussions With Myself lies in her newly discovered self-reliance as a sonic architect. “What I learned in the studio helped me to grow so much as a musician, and it’s going to benefit me for the rest of my life,” Bryce says. “It gave me a whole new confidence in my ideas and my creative spirit. That’s probably the most valuable thing I took from making this album—just having the realization of ‘Oh, you can do this.’”